A Triumph Rocket 3 Is Not Meant For The Mountains!

I have all the time loved motorcycles. I virtually grew up on an airfield where we had all sorts of machinery to play with, along with an assortment of old mopeds and motorcycles. I think I was about nine years old when I started to devotee the delights of motorcycling, albeit on an open airfield.

I am now over 50 years old, a diabetic, but carefully to continue to enjoy motorcycling. I have all the time had a bike in my Garage, but in recent years I have had to move away from sports bikes and even sports tourers like the Honda Blackbird. My stomach is too big, my wrists too weak and my knees ache too much!

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However, one ambition has all the time been left unfulfilled and that is to spend a week or two touring on my bike. So when the opening came to join several of my friends on a trip from the Uk, down straight through France, over the Pyrenees into Spain, and then over northern Spain from Barcelona to take the ferry home from Santander I jumped at the chance.

I was fortunate to be in a position to buy a new bike, and with the trip in mind and after an abortive visit to a Bmw dealer, I decided to go mad and buy an additional one Triumph.

I have owned a number of Triumphs in the past and love their three cylinder engines. However, putting power and relieve at the top of my list, I bought a Rocket Three Classic. Given the title of this description I can now hear you laughing at the understanding of taking this huge behemoth onto country lanes, let alone full-blown mountains! And so it proved.

I had only completed 250 miles on the engine before beginning our 2200 mile trip, and given that I had never ridden a cruiser before, let alone one with a 2.3 L engine, I was a slight apprehensive.

However, the three days we spent travelling to the south of France before getting into the mountains were most enjoyable. On the French motorways the bike was comfortable and the engine was a revelation. We had one day of torrential rain where the roads became rivers, but the Rocket, probably because of its sheer weight, felt as planted in the rain as it did in the dry.

Even on some of the French country lanes the bike handled pretty well, far best than I had startling for a bike of this size.

As we headed on into the Pyrenees however things began to change. At first the roads are smooth, with a few bends and long straights as one starts to climb. de facto at this stage I found I could de facto keep up with some of the others who were riding sports bikes.

However, as one gets higher and the mountains come to be more beautiful the roads come to be less so from a cruiser's point of view. The thing with the Rocket Three is that whilst the engine is a gem and brakes well-suited to the engine with plenty of stopping power, the sheer weight is a bit of a question and takes some getting used to on mountain roads.

One has to get used to the fact that when setting up the bike for a corner, on a downhill mountain road often with a hairpin at the bottom, one can think one has got it right but then the sheer weight of the bike means that it gathers a lot of momentum meaning that one has to carefully control the speed with the gears and brakes, a lot more so than on any other bike I have ridden. When you join this with an potential fear of heights I can only say that I found the perceive quite unnerving.

A Triumph Rocket 3 Is Not Meant For The Mountains!

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